Page 28 of On the Line

LAUREN

I’m two steps into the entryway of my new house, my arms loaded down with a very heavy box, when my doorbell rings and I jump in surprise, fumbling and almost dropping the box. It’s not that I’m not expecting the delivery people who are bringing the new bedroom furniture, it’s that I’ve never actually heard the doorbell’s unique ringing chimes before.

I prop the box up between my bent knee and the wall to the side of the door, knowing from experience that it would be nearly impossible to pick it up from the floor again. But when I swing the door open, it’s not the delivery people standing there, it’s Jameson.

“Hey,” I say, hating that my voice sounds as confused as I feel. What is he doing here? “What’s up?”

“Can I come in for a second?” His jawline is covered in a few days’ worth of stubble, and it’s giving him hot guy vibes that I wish I wasn’t noticing.

“Sure.” I angle my body out of the way so he can walk through the doorway. As he does, he plucks the box off my knee like it weighs ten pounds and rests it on his hip, holding it with one arm. It’s a relief to be able to stand up straight again now that I’m not carrying that load.

“Is this going upstairs?” he asks, eyeing the box with “Kids’ Bedroom” scrawled across the top.

“Yeah.”

“Want me to carry it up there for you?”

I hesitate for a moment, torn between wanting to prove that I can do this myself and knowing that me carrying a box that heavy up newly refinished stairs is a recipe for injury. “That would be great.”

He slips out of his sneakers, shifts the box in front of him, and heads toward the stairs. “Which room is it going in?” he asks.

I follow behind him on the stairs and direct him to the girls’ room, across the hall from mine. He sets the box in the corner I point to, out of the way of where their twin beds will be set up. “Want me to bring anything else up here for you? I don’t mind.”

I could do it myself. I still have a couple hours before Morgan brings the girls back, and I’d planned on moving everything myself. But if I let him help me, I might actually be able to start getting some things unpacked once the delivery guys arrive with the furniture.

“Okay. Thank you,” I tell him as we head back downstairs. He takes off his heavy zip-up hoodie, drapes it over the post at the bottom of my banister, and stands in my entryway in his sweats, T-shirt, and socks. I hate that I notice how ripped he is. I know he was once a professional athlete, but why does he still have to have the body of one? And up close like this, it’s even harder not to stare at those tattoos I noticed at dinner the other night—I want to examine them, see what he’s chosen to permanently ink onto his body, figure out what it says about him as a person.

Instead, I remind myself that none of that has anything to do with me. I need to mind my own business.

I lead the way back to the finished room off the kitchen, and Jameson chuckles when he looks at the boxes packed floor to ceiling against the wall. “You were going to carry all of these upstairs by yourself?”

“I could have done it.”

“Yeah, but why would you want to when you have people who could help you? You could have asked me, Jules, and Audrey to come over, and between the four of us this would have been done in half an hour.”

It never occurred to me to ask them for help. “Jules and Audrey have both been here a lot this week, making sure this project,” I say, nodding toward the door to the kitchen, “got far enough along that the girls and I could move in this weekend. I wouldn’t have further infringed on their kindness when they were already going above and beyond, by asking them to do me a favor like this.”

“Why didn’t you ask me, then?” He tilts his head as he stares down at me, like he’s daring me to admit just how befuddled I am any time he’s around. He’s a mystery—I thought I knew him, thought I knew who he was. I’ve spent most of the years I’ve known him hating him, but since Josh died, he’s done nothing but try to help me. Seeing him around his sisters and nephew is like seeing a totally different version of him, and I’m left wondering who he really is.

“Why are you being so nice to me now?”

“Iamnice, Lauren,” he says as he grabs a box from the top of one of the piles and hands it to me. I glance down to see that it says “Bedding” on it. I almost laugh because I’m sure he chose this one for me intentionally, knowing it’s light enough that I could carry it easily. Then he grabs another box for himself and says, “I’m just careful who I show that side of myself to.”

I follow behind him as he walks out of the room and through the kitchen. “Why?”

He pauses mid-step and looks over his shoulder, locking those dark eyes on me. “Because I’ve been burned too many times.” He turns back toward the entryway and keeps walking, but adds, “When you’re a professional athlete, and even as an agent, everyone wants something from you. Combine that with my mother leaving, my stepmother dying, and then my father leaving ... let’s just say I have trust issues.”

He’d told me a little bit about his family history when we had our dinner “that night,” but the trust issues part is totally new to me. I’m shocked not only that he’s so in touch with his feelings but also that he’s admitting it to me.

“Do you trustme, Jameson?” I ask, and he pauses with his foot on the first stair tread.

He looks at me over his shoulder again. “I want to.”

I lift my shoulder in a small shrug. “And should I trust you?”

He lifts his shoulder, a small shrug in return. “When I’ve earned your trust, you should.” Then he turns away from me and walks up the stairs, leaving me trying to determine his meaning.

I get the bedding box to the top of the stairs when the doorbell rings again, and this time it’s the furniture delivery I’ve been waiting for. I show them which bedroom is mine and which is the girls’, and then Jameson and I wait in the entryway, where we’ll need to get the door for them each time they bring in a new piece of furniture because it’s too cold to prop it open.

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